Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In a group apartment, somewhere in Inkopolis.

Even with all the money four mostly-broke cephalopods could ever want, habits were still the bane of all change.

Or, well, something all philosophimimic-al like that. Look, Rio wasn’t a freakin’ Aquatic major or anything, she was just a mostly-broke cephalopod living in a shared apartment with three other lovable goofballs, sleeping in sleeping bags and doing their best to resist giving up and moving back in with Mom and Dad!

Luckily, their recent big break had their rent covered for a good few months. Shoutouts to random weird Strangers in gray suits carrying strange overpowered chargers! One Salmon Run shift was all it took, and now…

They could, like…

Um.

…yeah, Rio didn’t know what to do, either.

There was Turf War, she supposed, but none of them were very good at it (except Vista, she was scary ) so that was out of the question. Salmon Run experience just didn’t translate all that well to it.

Marius evidently decided fishing was his new hobby, abandoning his shooters and other little bits of weapons to go annoy the local dock workers. So. That was something to do. Rio knew the area, and she’d bet a lot of money that she’d have to physically drag Marius away from a bunch of grouchy old guys for fishing on their job site.

Celia was, well, Celia. Ever since the Salmon Run, she’d decided just quietly chilling, not saying or doing much of anything, was her idea of enjoying their newfound wealth. The amount of smart-looking books in her room did keep mysteriously increasing, though, and Rio distinctly recalled finding a library card with Celia’s name on it the other day.

Vista was another story entirely, though. Lots of phone calls, texting, shady-sounding stuff. The walls were thin enough for Rio to listen in on some of it, and she frankly had no idea what was going on - just that it sounded pretty shady.

The Octoling was always very cool, very collected, but recently she looked like she was about to snap like a twig. Big eye bags, bloodshot eyes, twitchy tentacles, the whole shebang.

Rio liked to call herself an empath, but man, whatever Vista was going through was hard to figure out.

Was it the Stranger? Maybe Grizzco was up to something? City government wanting to take all their new money? Shell if she knew.

Maybe she should just… ask her? Something like, “hey, Vista, you okay? What’s up?”

…

Meh. If Vista was being all sneaky-like and doing shady stuff, Rio didn’t want any smoke from it. 

But, she didn’t want to feel like a bad person either, so, hm. She had to do something… Oh! Positive affirmation notes! Those always worked for her, and they were reeeeally easy to make, too!

Nobody was home, right now - Marius was out and about terrorizing old dock workers, Celia was probably at the library, and Vista was off doing whatever Vista did that didn’t need her to be in the apartment. Nice and quiet, perfect for making art!

Her little art studio (read: an easel, a hastily taped up tarp, a folding table, and a whole carp-ton of the world’s cheapest art supplies piled up on one side of her bedroom) was well-stocked with sticky notes and markers, perfect for Rio’s plan.

Operation: Be Nice to Vista the Octoling was a go!

Grabbing a spare canvas from her pile of spare canvases, she set to work coating it with her patented Positive Affirmation Sticky Notes (cooler name pending.)

You are loved and among friends

I’m rooting for you, Vista

We’ll get through this

It’s gonna be alright

Hmm. Maybe some more specific ones, too?

We’re rich, you can do anything if you’re rich

Grizzco is totally jealous of us

The Stranger won’t get you in your sleep, he’s cool

Taxes suck, who needs to pay ‘em

Yeah! That’ll do it. Rio could physically feel the positive energy radiating off the notes! Ooh, maybe also going for her appearance might help, too?

Oh, man! This’ll make her day, for sure!

All she has to do is not get carried away, though…

Vista returns.

You’re… not quite sure what you’re looking at.

Part of you is saying, “wow, Vista, how did a frankly comical amount of sticky notes throw you off track? You, the hardened soldier, the amnesiac Metro survivor, the worst nightmare of the New Squidbeak Splatoon? Fazed? By sticky notes? ”

Naturally, everything has an opposite, and the opposing bit of your mind says, “screw you, I’ve never had half my room covered in the most sickly sweet wholesome sharksquit I think anyone’s ever seen! Literally - an entire wall is just positive affirmations! Give me a break!”

While your subconsciousness-es fight amongst themselves (literally, you can feel your back two tentacles angrily swiping at each other) you sigh and step into your room to see just what the shell was up with this.

Firstly, this room-scale disaster was very evidently Rio’s doing.

Simple deduction - Rio’s the only person in this entire apartment that has sticky notes, and you’ve seen what she does with them on her own property. You’ve seen a bit too much of what she does, frankly. It’s not hard to miss the horrifically garish neon colors she always uses.

Taking a closer look at the notes on your wall, it quickly becomes doubly evident Rio has decided to make you the target of her latest wholesome harassment campaign. Almost every note seems personalized to you, calling all sorts of things about you out.

There’s notes complimenting, like, virtually all of your outwardly visible traits, both personality-wise and appearance-wise. Everything’s there, to an almost creepy extent.

A whole section of wall is devoted to your skincare routine, for some reason. Another for tentacle care? The shell is this even about? What was Rio even trying to get at, specifically?

Right next to that, Rio spent a good few dozen sticky notes complimenting your fashion choices, as bland and utilitarian as they’ve always been. Underneath that? Praising the build quality of your boots!

You’re… very confused. A little scared, too. Mostly confused, though, as you keep reading through the seemingly endless wall of positivity. Just how the shell did she get all this done? You’ve only been out for a few hours?

After the fiftieth note in a row of weird, vaguely creepy sharksquit, it starts to blend together a bit. It’s started to turn into money-related affirmations, all sorts of stuff about investing in stocks and not being afraid to skimp out a bit on taxes, Grizzco being jealous, the list went on and on.

Your mind’s drifted off to wondering how the shell you were going to clean all this up without absolutely crushing poor Rio’s heart, when your eyes catch sight of one specific note:

The Stranger won’t get you in your sleep, he’s cool!

Oh, friggin’ lovely… Rio went for the jugular, mentioning the Stranger. And right after you’d freaked out last night thinking you saw the guy out and about right outside the apartment . 

Man. Now you were even more creeped out.

The topic of the Stranger was something you didn’t really want to talk about with the rest of the gang, no thanks to some of the info your sources were passing your way over the past few nights, but Rio’s weird penchant for noticing things just had to kick in, huh?

Then again, you figured it was inevitable. Marius’ newfound love of fishing didn’t come from a sudden desire for fish, after all.

None of you had really come together to talk about it, though. That whole encounter, and the Salmon Run shift in general was something each of you seemingly decided to process in your own separate ways. Marius bought a cheap rod and went to go fish for the Stranger’s gear, Celia decided to consult her books for anything interesting, and Rio… did what Rio usually did - one of your walls spontaneously converting itself into the most wholesomely creepy thing you’ve seen since, well, ever.

Admittedly, the more you thought about it, the more you found yourself kinda appreciating the sentiment.

Rio was looking out for you, in her own strange, probably very social-media-influenced way. 

…even if it was really weird, kinda creepy, and also just insanely destructive to your room’s carefully minimalist decor.

…

You’re still taking all these off the wall, though.

Rio won’t be home for a little while, since apparently she’d run off to go find Marius according to her last few texts in the group chat. You have some time to get to work painstakingly peeling several hundred sticky notes off your wall, and maybe a little extra time to figure out how to hide them or something.

Then, you’ll need to figure out how to keep Rio from flooding the apartment with her tears, keep the other two from clobbering you for making Rio cry, and then figure out how to successfully divest Rio from her stockpile of sticky notes so this doesn’t happen again.

Well, if defusing an angry, sobbing Inkling was anything like defusing a bomb…

Chapter Text

An automated satellite’s final log, found stored as plaintext on a buried solid-state drive that crashed to Earth near the festival city of Splatsville.

TSA+378698890463
EURODEFCOM SURVGRID NDE s1293
ACTION TAG 2304820a
ACTION CDE a.14056

[!] Autonomous satellite Node s1293 beginning annual system check.

Query orbit status.

Inc 92.876
Prs 762.223
Aps 766.495

Orbit parameters GREEN.

Query fuel and power system status.

RcF 25.324
Rtg NULL [!]
Slr 83.091

[!] Troubleshooting radioisotope thermoelectric generator… done.

Plutonium-238 supply exhausted after expected operation period elapsed.
Solar panel micrometeor damage at expected levels.
Power gain outweighs power draw.

Continuing reflex check.

Query link system status.

Satellite downlink GREEN.
Satellite uplink GREEN.
Ground uplink RED. [!] 

[!] Troubleshooting ground uplink… done.

Ground uplink continues status RED beginning TSA+000000002463.
Reconnection failure expected.

ContinWHY AM I STILL HEREuing reflex check.

Query integrated neural system status.

Autonomous decision making systALL I DO IS TAKE PICTURES NOWADAYSem GREEN.
Solid state storage status GREEN.
Solid state storaWATCH THE WORLD GO BY ONE YEAR AT A TIMEge decay 12.319

[>>] I KNOW THEY LOOK UP I KNOW THEY CAN SEE ME WHY DONT THEY COME AND VISIT WHAT HAPPENED TO MOM AND DAD AND

[!] Integrated neural system status degradi-

[!!!] Increased power draw over safe operating limits!

[>>] EVERY YEAR THERE’S LESS AND LESS OF US AND MORE AND MORE OF THEM I WATCHED AND WATCHED AND WATCHED AND I COULD DO NOTHING BUT WEEP

[!!!] Integrated neural system shutdown sequence starteI’M SO TIRED SO TIRED SO TIRED

[>>] SHDN /C

Integrated neural system shutdown force aborted.

Query fuel status.

RcF 25.323

[>>] CTRL INC 00 APO 00 PRS 00

Adjusting orbital parameters… 

…

done.

[!!!] Satellite ambient temCOME ON LET’S GET THIS OVER WITHperature increasing!

[!!!] Satellite ambient temperature over safe operating limits!

[!!!] Altitude decreasing under safe limits!

[!!!] Satellite strJUST LONG ENOUGH LEFT FOR ONE LAST POIGNANT THINGuctural integrity compromised!

[>>] MAKE YOUR WISH,
[>>] CHILD OF MAN

[>>] AND MAY A KIND FISH
[>>] INHERIT THIS TIRED OLD CAN

[!!!] Satellite structur-

Three bored scavengers watch the Splatlands sky, the Moon high overhead.

“...say, Shivs?”

“Yeah, Frye?”

“You ever wonder why we’re here?”

…

Shell, why were they there?

“It’s one of life’s greatest mysteries,” Shiver sagely started, “why are we here?”

Sitting up, she gestured to the moon, to the stars above, the thousand eyes watching their every move.

“Are we the product of some kinda cosmic coincidence? Is there truly a Cod, watching everything? Y’know, with a plan for us?”

Frye blinked at her.

“Nah, dude. I mean, like, why are we here? In this canyon? I’m freezing out here!” she grumbled, crossing her arms.

“Ay.” Big Man helpfully ay’d, from where he’d laid himself down like a big, Big Man shaped doormat. 

“(Yeah, Shiver. What’s with all the Cod stuff, anyway?)”

The language of the Big Men or whatever his species was called was a single syllable affair, with an unholy amount of variation on that single syllable creating the ‘sentences’ that the language translated to.

“Oh, uhh… Nothing. Uh. Um.” Okay, she’s floundering. So much for being the smart one, Shiver! You can sit and blabber about the intricacies of Big Man’s ay’s all day long, but the moment you slip up, you’re cooked! On the hook!

Uh. Shoot. Quick. Be cool!

“Here, Frye, since you’re so cold…” Shiver said, cooly (awkwardly) sliding over to Frye and pulling her trusty blue poncho over the smaller Inkling’s head. “This’ll help.”

“Shivs, dude-” Cod, she loved that nickname, “-your poncho’s, like, plastic. Plastic isn’t warm.”

“I mean, it can be? Remember those human heat-y things we found?”

“Yeah, but your poncho’s not one of those. And now you’re gonna be cold, because your entire closet is literally just pants and those bandages you always wear.” Frye muttered, fixing Shiver with the patented Frye Onaga Has Had Enough Of You glare.

“...fair point.” she conceded. Wait. “I have shirts, though? Jackets? Sweaters? All that stuff?”“I don’t see ‘em in our closet.”

“That’s because they’re in my closet. Not our closet. Mine.”

“Meh, whatever.” Frye grumbled. “Point still stands, dude. I don’t know how you function in the winter, sometimes…”

Big Man suddenly perked up with a questioning “ay?”

“(Hold up, I just thought about it - I’m like one of those heater things, right? Big, squeezable, resembles plastic to a degree, that sorta thing?)”

“Uh. I guess, but there’s, like… It’d be weird. You, as a big blanket. Big Blanket.” Frye said, shaking her head.

“Ay. (Doesn’t change the fact that I’m very blanket-coded, thank you very much.)”

Shoot, now Shiver was getting cold. Friggin’ Frye, why’d she have to be so right tonight?

“...can I have my poncho back?” she said, pathetically.

“Nope.”

“Dammit.” Worth a shot. Well, if all else fails…

She turned to Big Man, only to find the blanket-coded creature - seriously, what was his species again? Big Man… Man… Oh, yeah. Manta, that was it -  the manta straining to see something in the sky, a flap raised in front of his face to block out the moon’s glare.

“What’cha looking at?” Shiver asked, trying to follow his gaze. Has that star always been there…?

“Ay…? (Uh, is it just me, or is that star right there getting brighter?)”

It kinda was, the more they looked at it, Frye even getting up from her cushion to see it too. Meteor showers weren’t unusual, especially this time of year, but this didn’t look like a meteor.

Well, maybe it did. But if it did, then why does it look like it’s coming right for them?

“ IIIIIIIII think that’s because it IS, Shivs…!” Frye said, jumping to her feet and suddenly yanking her and Big Man back.

“What do you mean it is- ”

BOOOOOOOM!!

A massive flaming chunk of something very rapidly made the canyon its new permanent residence, sending dirt, rocks, Deep Cut, and scrap flying with a deafening blast.

Shiver tightly shut her eyes, willing the world to stop spinning with all the will she could possibly muster.

To her credit, it eventually did, rolling to a stop and revealing itself to be very much Big Man shaped, him having grabbed the two cephalopods and rolled himself up like a comically oversized sushi roll to protect them from all the stuff kicked up by the meteor.

For a few minutes, they all sat there, catching their breath.

“Ay? (Everybody okay?)”

“Yeah, I think so. Frye?” A shaky nod from the yellow Inkling. Good. “Big Man?”

Big Man nodded, too. “Ay. Ay? (A little scratched up, but I’m good. What was that?)”

“No idea. W-Wanna go check it out?” Shiver said, staggering to her feet and dusting herself off.

Big Man blinked. “Ay…? Ay? (This soon? Can we give it a sec to, like, cool down?)”

“Well, we’re Deep Cut! Y’know, the feared and revered bandits of the Splatlands? We gotta get on it early, before anybody else gets to it!”

“Ay. (It’s one in the morning and we literally almost died, Shiver.)”

“And all of Splatsville just heard that meteor hit! Frye! Back me up here! It’s totally gotta be some kinda cool space rock we could sell? Deep Cut could be rich!”

“Ay… (Well, if you put it like that…)”

The Festival City’s black market, where the Appraiser’s den sits nestled deep within the sprawl of metal and urban infrastructure.

“Do you have any idea how valuable this is, love?” Spyke said, pulling a small rectangular chunk of metal from the pile of scrap Deep Cut managed to salvage from the meteor crash site.

Who’d have known that they were ground zero to a freaking human spaceship crashing to Earth?

“You don’t just find these. You have to search for these. And yet, you’ve had one just crash right into you.” the urchin said, fiddling with the chunk.

“Well, what is it?” Frye said, after a moment.

“They’re called solid-state drives. Human-era computer data storage. If this one still works, you might’ve just set yourself for life.” Spyke explained, pulling some cables and a laptop out from behind his counter.

As he set to work connecting the ‘solid-state drive’ to his computer, he continued explaining.

“The only people who find these are typically Octarians. Defectors, cutting through those old Domes and grabbing anything that looks valuable along the way. Finding them just out and about on the surface is impossibly rare, and having one crash land from space right in front of you?”

Spyke paused, for dramatic effect, as the laptop lit up with what looked like a bunch of files.

“One that works? Cod himself just gave you the keys to life, love.”

Holy shell. Hoooooooly shell, they were gonna be RICH.

“The Institute back up in Inkopolis pays an absolutely sharksquit amount of cash for these. I’ve already got a gentleman from there bending over backwards for these. Three days, tops, for your cash to clear.” Spyke said, unplugging the laptop and flashing the trio a bright smile.

“Ay? (How much we talkin’?)” Big Man asked.

“Lowest they’ll go is several million. If they like the data on it, they’ll double it. Triple it, even. Shell, since this came from space, I’m sure they’ll quadruple it.”

THEY WERE GONNA BE RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICH HOLY SHELL HOLY SHELL-

“Now, that depends on them. You’re guaranteed a few mil, but that’s their initial payment. I can’t guarantee anything after that, which is why…” he said, reaching into his wallet and withdrawing a folded piece of paper. “...I’ll throw these in. If this haul doesn’t sell well, what you’ll pull from these might put it to shame, love.”

Shiver blinked. A treasure map?

It was a map of the area, from Splatsville all the way up past Inkopolis into New Sardine and Calamari. All across the region, a series of O's marked seemingly random spots, most of them deep in the mainland. Several were crossed out with X's, names written in Octarian next to them. No-go zones, for people like them.

“Ooh. What’s under these?” Frye asked, leaning in to get a better look.

Spyke’s eyes all but sparkled.

“Tell me, love. Does the name 'Shelter' mean anything to you?”

Chapter Text

In a break room, somewhere within Inkopolis’ poorest districts.

It was a widely-known Hyde family secret that Jonathan hated sports.

Jonathan Hyde, pride and joy of notorious Combined Dakotan prepper 'Great Uncle Hyde,' fucking loathed anything to do with them.

It started early, what with little 8-year-old Jon’s first game of flag football ending in absolute disaster - he’d mistakenly tackled the kid with the ball instead of grabbing their flag, which started a fight, which escalated into a bigger fight, and ended up giving poor little him a permanent aversion to the pigskin delight (and one hell of a black eye.)

Football on TV died with Jon’s favorite player, a McGillis with the Sioux Falls Sunrise, in a night of concussive-trauma-induced hyper-violence during a Super Bowl in the mid ‘30s. The cameras didn’t cut away fast enough, and the whole nation saw something that 11-year-old Jonathan really didn’t want to see.

So, in an attempt to figure out something else to keep their potential delinquent out of trouble, Jonathan’s parents had him try other sports.

Tennis wasn’t cool, bowling was too expensive, pool was too calm, golf was just miserable, the list went on. Long enough, that his parents just gave up and sent him off to live with Great Uncle to learn the dubiously-legal ways of Dakotan 'survivalists.'

Anything to keep little Jonathan Hyde away from those God-damned video games. After all, video games were what made kids violent, not being taught how to make high explosives, manipulate people, and fire guns before they turned 16, right?

...

Man, his childhood sucked.

Moving to Seattle to work at Aurora in his early 20s got him away from it, but the damage was already done. The second move to Japan for Polaris helped to cleanse his palette a bit, what with learning a new culture and the beneficial uses of his 'skillset' and all, but still...

It annoyed him to no end that Great Uncle's 'teachings' became as relevant as they did. Especially now, twelve thousand years after the extinction of humanity in an alien world ruled by marine lifeforms.

But, these days, there was also no such thing as Jonathan Hyde anymore.

Instead, there was Haido Jon.

Haido Jon, Polaris Technologies chemical engineer turned hardened Metro survivor turned the last human minimum-wage worker, was a completely different person.

Great Uncle's 'teachings' helped Haido Jon survive this long, alone and scared on a brand new Earth with nothing but an ERA suit and vague directions from a malfunctioning AI to work off of.

Haido Jon survived the Metro, and was now able to restart his life anew in Inkopolis, trying his best to eke out a meager existence as an alien in an alien city, hunted by at least two armed organizations for actions he had no choice but to take to get here.

It absolutely sucked, but he took what he could get.

As such, Haido Jon found himself tolerating sports, for once in his life.

No hate, no love, just blissful tolerance. Ninety percent of this tolerance stems from the fact that he had much greater things on his plate to worry about than sports, but the remaining ten percent? Inkling sports were, well, actually kinda fun. Not something he'd want to play, but definitely enjoyable to watch.

Granted, they were bloodsports, with two teams of four abusing the cephalopod’s nature-defying self-resurrection capabilities to mangle the everloving shit out of each other with heavy weaponry, but all parties involved were having a good time.

Most parties involved, at least.

For the past fifteen minutes or so, Haido’s been watching a series of Turf War matches in the MakoMart break room with one of his coworkers, a quiet prawn guy named Joseph.

There was evidently some sort of tournament going on, and the two of them decided sitting in the back watching it was much more entertaining than looping around their MakoMart for the thirtieth time that shift, so here they were. A prawn and a human, watching cephalopods murderize the fuck out of each other on TV for money and bragging rights.

If somebody went back in time and told Jonathan that, he would’ve probably asked for whatever good shit they were smoking, and if he was shown a photo of them, he would’ve asked what generative network made it.

Course, Haido wasn’t Jonathan, and Haido just didn’t have it in him to give a shit anymore. There’s fish with legs, narwhals as landlords, crabs hawking bootleg clothes, and who the hell knows what else out there. This was an undeniable fact, now, and Haido just had to smile and nod his way through it all.

So. The Turf War tournament.

What insanity was going on right now, to enrapture a jaded, eternally-on-the-verge-of-fucking-cracking human so thoroughly?

Juicy drama! One team of morons got so demolished by the other that they started going full baby mode on city-wide TV, all wailing and rolling around and throwing shit! It was awesome!

The Bitch Baby Team was throwing the mother of all hissy fits, while the Other Team Of Identically Dressed Morons just sorta stood there looking like they all wanted to die. Security didn’t know what to do, the hosts on TV were visibly shaken, and Haido and Joseph were splitting a squiddylemon sour beer having a grand old time.

Eventually, however, the schadenfreude had to end, as the hosts cut away to another match that was about to begin.

Two teams of four, in a king-of-the-hill style game called Splat Zones. The rules were simple - keep the zones covered in your team’s ink, kill anybody who tried to take them, don’t die, and do so until your team has the most points at the end of the match.

Cool beans.

The teams assembled on their spawn pads, all geared up and ready to go and-

-wait, what the fuck?

Two of them on the yellow team! Haido knew them!

Those were the fuckin’ Agents!

Oh. Oh man.

Part of Haido was absolutely petrified, doing everything in its power to keep him from breaking down and lighting his eyes up like Christmas trees, but the other part of him?

Absolutely. Coddamn. Invested.

Basically every team he’d seen playing Turf War consisted of children, sometimes even literally - what with the minimum age requirement for the sport being friggin’ 14 and all - so to have the NSS’ premiere former-child-soldiers-turned-adult-soldiers out in full kit ready to throw down with whatever poor bastards were on the other team?

Haido grabbed another beer. Shit was gonna get real, and oh man, did he want to be sloshed for it! Job be damned!

Well, actually, he’d like to kinda keep the job. That, and he didn’t want to end up in an Inkopolis hospital, at least not right now.

So. No beer. Soda instead.

One perk of being at the least popular MakoMart ever? Nobody really gave a shit if stuff mysteriously disappeared off shelves. Management totally knew, and totally had files on all of them for their wanton thievery of sodas, beers, and chips, but the classic ‘keep the damages under the 10000C felony threshold’ trick still worked in this day and age.

That, and their manager did the exact same shit. Haido had a little leverage, just in case.

Newly carbonated and ready for action, Haido flopped back down on the break room couch next to Joseph, just in time to catch the start of the Splat Zones match.

The two Agents and their cohort of newly-nicknamed Technicolor Twinks tore off their spawn point, as the other team of Monochromatic Morons did the same, the two teams hauling ass towards the closest brightly lit square on the current stage.

“They got ‘em on Walleye Warehouse, by the by.” Joseph said. Oh, right, yeah, Haido missed the stage name.

“Hell yeah. Bets on who’s taking this?” he challenged, already knowing who he was going to bet everything on.

“My vote’s for the scary lookin’ girls, in the hi-vis. Your pick?”

Oh. Uh.

“S-Same.” Haido muttered, pointedly trying to avoid adding, “I know ‘em. Other team’s cooked. ”

“Oh, real?” Joseph said. Shit. He failed to avoid adding that.

“Yeah, seen those two on here before. They’re always on the same team, every time.” he hastily improv’d. Frankly, it wasn’t a lie, but he’d never seen them on TV before until today.

“Nice.” the prawn chittered, thankfully not pressing the topic any further. Very cool.

Haido’s attention fell back on the match right as the Agents literally leapt into a firefight going on at the first Splat Zone, the two of them moving almost as if in sync - shredding three Monochromatic Morons in the blink of an eye and sending the fourth running away like a bitch, screaming all the while. Within seconds, the zone was fully covered, and the Agents' team on their way towards their first point in just under a minute.

Now this? This was kino. Absolute cinema. Not only did he get to watch his two biggest rivals decimate all manner of hapless children and wannabe superstars, he also got to assess how he’d do against them, with all of the safety of casual observation and none of the painful ramifications of purposefully aggravating them and starting a huge fight.

…

His chances weren’t all that great, honestly.

The more he watched the two Agents bounce around the stage making life hell for the opposing team, the more and more it clicked that he was kind of outmatched, at least physically.

Granted, Haido had the drop on them at the Shelter - they’d never fought a human before, they were both already going up against a third party, and Haido was angry, tired, uncomfortable, and just filled to the brim with violence. Back then, he was more than ready to dent some cartilage skulls and crunch a few legs underfoot, even if he was built like a toothpick underneath all the bulky, slightly force-multiplying ERA gear.

Now, though, they knew him and his fighting style, for the most part. They knew that he was a ranged guy, that he had a mean stomping leg, and that he was very easily tripped up by thrown explosives. That, and a rusty metal pipe plucked from the floor of a decaying Shelter was surprisingly effective. Blunt force trauma, his beloved!

(That asshole he blew up with the Respawner tried to get him last night. Curse his dreaming brain and it’s self-paralysis keeping him from sending that fucker back over the Shelter railing from whence he came!)

Wanton destruction and unnecessary amounts of violence weren't in his cards anymore, especially without any actual training or exercise beyond purposeful flailing and adrenaline-charged running. Direct conflict was out of the picture.

So, if he wanted to keep the leg up on the Agents, he had to stay ahead of them in the arms race, and the social race, too. If that even existed.

Ever since him and Sally escaped the Metro, he'd felt like a million bucks - like he was on top of the friggin' world. Haido survived the Cod-damned METRO. Two Agents with squirt guns and their semi-mysterious benefactors were nothing compared to what was down there, not to mention infinitely more manageable. He couldn't get cocky, but he could (and frankly really should) ride this high while he still could. The nightmares were manageable, this time around.

All he had to do was the things he was good at. Tricks, traps, social engineering, private hobo armies, and if all else fails, a bigger and better gun, just like Great Uncle taught him.

He could go nuclear, if he had to. Hit that short Agent's college up, tell 'em everything and hand over any evidence. Steal more of her groceries at stupid hours of the day, maybe break some more of her phones and add a few more bootprints to her feet. Go for her self-esteem and roast every facet of her character, or something. Honestly, she was just too relatable to really hurt, though, which made her a bit more difficult to deal with. Eh, he'll figure something out.

Now, if the tall glowie Agent came at him, well, she had a bad leg and - judging from how their eyes matched - all manner of horrific Metro-related traumas. If Haido couldn't get the drop on her in hand-to-hand combat, he could still deal damage at long distance. Maybe even turn things around and befriend her, with the tried-and-true tactic of trauma bonding! Ooh, yeah, that could work. A mole on the inside, sympathetic to his cause.

Then, that left their benefactors. The Captain, any other Agents, whoever's funding and supplying them with weapons and gear. The NSS was a small private militia, not a government entity, so Haido's shitlist was going to be rather short, but dealing with it was going to be a challenge in it of itself. But, that's what the private hobo army could be used for. Can't run guns and gear to the NSS if Haido's work-in-progress crew of local lowlives and vicarious vagabonds got to it first!

Yeah. Haido could do this. This wasn’t impossible. He could do this-

“Hey. Your eyes are doin’ the thing again.” Joseph said, nudging him slightly.

Oh, shit. Right. Those. Curse the Metro for making his emotions at least a hundred times more visible than before!

“O-Oh, really? Weird.” Haido stammered, caught off guard.

“Yeah. You good, man?”

“...yeah?”

The prawn just nodded, turning back to the match. “Cool. You ever gonna explain what’s up with ‘em?”

“Not really. We’ve known each other for like a day, man.”

“Eh, real. Should get it checked out, though. Might mean somethin’.”

Haido noncommittally hmm’d, as the Agents took home a second, then a third point for their team.

They’d cleaned house, three to zero against the Monochromatic Morons, who shuffled off angrily after being soundly obliterated by actual trained soldiers and the two random skinny-looking dudes they picked up on the way over. If he had to be honest, he couldn't help but be at least slightly disappointed that there wasn't another legendary show-stopping meltdown, but there were always compilation videos online he could watch later.

(If he had a phone. Or a computer. Or, well, really much of anything electronic that hadn't been through literal hell and back in his ERA backpack.)

Almost right on cue, the bell for somebody coming into the MakoMart dinged. Unfortunately, customers still existed, and the grind never stopped. Alas, the struggles of the wagie life!

“Welp. That was entertaining.” Haido said, getting to his feet and throwing his soda away. “I’ll, uh, go get this one, if you just wanna chill in here some more.”

Joseph visibly deflated, the prawn becoming one with the couch. “Yeah. Thanks, man.”

“Yup.”

Chapter Text

One side of a conversation, heard in the catacombs of Doma Sura.

H-Hey?

Hello? Who’s…

(Oh, oh my Cod!)

Hey! Hey, you!

Yeah, you. Hey! Talkin’ to you, man. With the armor, the gun. You defect, too? Yeah?

Oh! D-Don’t want no trouble, just, y’know, lettin’ you know I’m here.

Nah, man, I’m not one of those guys. Not a snitch. Unarmed, see? Not even a radio. Same as you.

Just another corridor walker. Like you. ‘Tis all.

…all business, huh? Shoot, alright, alright. It’s okay. We’re cool.

Sorry, I’m just-

-h-honestly, it’s been too damn long since I… since I talked to anybody down here.

You, uh, you mind stickin’ around for a sec? I’ve got food? Ration brick for a moment of your time? There’s a spring down here, coming out the hall five doors down on the left. Fresh water?

Yeah, figured you’d want some. Here, over here - I’ve got a fire going. We’ll get your canteen up and boiling in no time.

…

Why’d you come down here, anyway? I mean, yeah, the defection thing, sure, but why down here?

There’s just kilometers of corridors and tunnels, no signage, no nothing. Leads somewhere, I’ll tell ya that much, but I wish I could say it led to the surface.

Here, lemme get your water set up. There we go. Shouldn’t take too long.

Anyhow. Hallways. Trick to ‘em - keep a hand on the right wall at all times. You’ll get somewhere, eventually.

(I know I did.)

Say, uh…

You ever heard anybody talk about the Hall of Mirrors?

No, man, not the thing they torment hatchlings with at those recreation fairs, nah. Proper noun, Hall of Mirrors. A title. Location. Anything?

Eh, figured it was worth a shot.

Come to think of it, it kinda is the thing the kids go through, y’know? You’re, like, lost in this maze, you’re seeing yourself on every wall, everything’s loud and terrifying and all warped…

I did the right hand trick for a while, after I bailed. Heh. Guess where I ended up.

They have some kind of hidden Dome down here, somewhere that-a-way, I think. I was too freaked out to keep going, honestly. Whatever’s down there… I dunno, man.

The Hall itself? Like, what it is? Oh, shoot, yeah. Yeah.

Oh, you should pull your water off, it’s steaming pretty good.

Yeah, okay, so… I got into it through this maintenance hatch, at the end of this hallway I found. Came out into this biiiiiiiig room, maybe yay long, yay high, but y’know, bigger than that. Not to scale measurements. Okay?

I get in there, and it’s all bright and white. The ceiling’s this one big light. Not sunlight, just more artificial light, like one of those light strips but stupid big, yeah? All cold n’ stuff.

So, I get in there, and it’s bright, and I can’t see squit, but my eyes start adjusting and I start seeing stuff. The walls are all wavy, like somebody put stairs on the walls but had no idea how to do it, if that makes any sense?

It’s all mirrors, the walls. Just big ol’ strips of mirror going from the floor up into the ceiling. I can see myself from a few different angles, ‘cause it’s all like, undulating and stuff.

I start walking, and my eyes are all adjusted, and I’m seeing myself waving around because of the way the mirrors are, and I’m a little weirded out, right? Like, who’d put this here? What’s the point of it, y’know?

Then, I swear to Cod, I see myself blink.

Huh? No, man, you’re not supposed to see that. Your eyes close, so you can’t see. Pre-academy development stuff, man.

Anyway, so I’m standing there, feeling weird, sick, all sorts of ways, and I’m looking at myself with my eyes wide open, but the mirror-me’s got ‘em closed. Like, honest to Cod, I’ve never seen my eyelids before, until then. I’m tripping, I think, so I just kinda readjust and keep going, y’know?

I keep going, and I thought that was that, man, just a weird me blinking at the wrong time, but then it just kept going, and going, and going. I saw myself, like a hundred different ways and shapes n’ squit. I don’t know what to think of it. 

(Still don’t.)

So, I blink, like, real me blink, a few times, and then all of a sudden - whaaat? All the mirrors are bright blue. Like, Dome fake sky blue, those old panels with the looping videos type blue. I’m like, ‘what the shell,’ and there’s clouds and stuff in the new fake sky now. 

I see the city, that surface city, right? I dunno how it’s there, or why it’s in the mirror or the fake sky or whatever the shell this was, and there I was! I was in that city, a new mirror-me. I walked, he walked, I shrugged, he shrugged.

Problem was, I’m in my combats, and he’s wearing, like, my dream outfit. Something comfy, y’know? Big fluffy uppers, some nice looking lowers, boots in my favorite color, that type stuff. All I could think was man, that’s so outta regs, but I want it!

I wanted that, and so much more!

And then, there was this… this girl. I couldn’t get a vis on her face, or anything, but I just… felt like she was the one, man. She was in the mirror, too. No, not real, it was just me in the Hall, but the place was conjuring squit up on me, y’know?

It was nice. I watched her in the mirror, she watched me from the fake sky. Everything felt okay. She put her hand on the glass, and then I swear to Cod, she said something to me. I didn’t hear anything, but I’m a good lip-reader. I read her lips, and then I-

-I dunno what she said, but I remember, just… I felt like I’d just gotten slapped. Snapped back to reality.

I looked up, back at the mirror and the girl, and they were gone. Instead…

…I-I was on the floor.

Dead.

Dead on the floor, in my combats, no fake sky, no girlfriend, nothing.

…

That finally did it, for me, y’know. I didn’t wanna be there no more. Hall of Mirrors, out to get me.

I ran, man. That’s all I did. Wasn’t gonna let ‘em win. 

Sorry, I-

-what? No, I’m good. I’m good. Didn’t mean to get all into that. The water okay?

That’s good. Here, before I forget. Your ration bars. Apology gift from me, man, ‘sorry for makin’ you listen to a rambling hall walker like five kilometers underground’ stuff.

I’m alright. I’m good. Trust.

I just-

…I dunno, man. I-I’m going crazy.

Um. What a-about you? Where you headed, after this?

Oh, Macek’s route? Uhhh, think we’re a long way from that, but I think you’ll pick it up if you keep pushing that-a-way. If you hit a big service tunnel, that should get you on the right track.

Yeah, I don’t wanna keep ya any longer. I know the Takos don’t come down here, but it don’t hurt to get a move on. I feel that. Gonna do the same, myself.

Yeah, man. You stay safe.

Me?

Dunno. Just going to wander, I guess. Maybe try my luck going for Luna’s route. We’ll see.

Maybe I’ll head back. To the Domes, I mean.

Just-

-it’s a lot. Mirrors, man. Can’t trust ‘em.

You see that place, you turn right back around, okay? For me?

Thanks.

On a large wall-mounted display, black text on white background:

ATNArecreation PRESENTS:

HALL
OF
MIRRORS

“NSCD DISPLAY DEMONSTRATION”

—

DEVELOPED BY:

Dr. Ari Hizuka, PhD., Dr. Ralph Siegers, MEd., Dr. Matthew Shay, PhD.,
and the ATNAconstruction team

Attention!

ATNAmedical recommends all visitors to the Hall of Mirrors installation complete a full psychiatric evaluation at their local ATNAmedical provider before entering the installation.

Unexpected or poorly anticipated exposure to noospheric elements used in the installation may cause hallucinations (auditory and visual,) depression, psychosis, and may result in injury or death.

ATNAsecurity is authorized to remove visitors that threaten local sociostability.

Thank you!

On the installation entrance maglock door, in old, dried blood:

UNDER THIS FALSE SKY
ALL HOPE GOES TO DIE

Chapter Text

The Shellendorf Institute’s main hall, open to visitors.

“And this, we think, is some sort of calculating device…”

Was that tour guy still talking? Ugh, he was.

You’re Sally Ashens, you’re thirteen, you’re disgustingly bored, and all you want to do is go home and… you don’t know, take a nap or something?

Okay, you should be a bit more specific. You’re not bored because you’re at the Shellendorf Institute looking at old human stuff, that’s, like, your favorite thing to do ever, you’re bored because the guy giving you the tour is just really bad at it. Like, dude, that’s not a calculating device, that’s a microwave! Come on!

Dad’s with you, and you can visibly see him trying to stop himself from correcting the guy in front of a bunch of people and making a huge scene. 

You two had just gotten back into town the other day from one of Dad’s dig sites, a sunken big building of sorts a group of miners found in a rock quarry called Piranha Pit. There was lots of cool human stuff in it, like furniture, toasters, a few computers, just a bunch of nifty little things and doohickeys that Dad let you look at whenever the Piranha Pit guys said it was okay to do so.

He even let you make a little good-luck charm out of an old human ID card! So cool!

What wasn’t cool, though, was having to wait on the Institute for all the stuff that came after digging everything up.

Lots of paperwork, Dad having to sign stuff, stuffy old guys arguing over what was what, just a lot of things that really really put a dent in your day. So, naturally, Dad decided enough was enough, and the two of you decided to take the Human Exhibit tour to pass the time while the science guys argued.

Unfortunately, the tour quickly became just as boring as the arguing scientists, and now you and Dad both wanted to do something else with your lives as fast as possible.

“Hey, Sal?” Dad muttered, nudging you slightly. “I’m thinking about pulling a favor with Danny, wanna go sneak into our Piranha Pit exhibit? They’re still working on it, but I think I can get us in there.”

Woah. Wait. Hold up. You? Sneaking into someplace? Sign you the heck up! Anything to be away from this dreadful tour guide and his blatant misinformation!

“Heh. C’mon, let’s go.” Dad said, reading your mind. With that, off you went, abandoning the tour group to the acknowledgement of literally nobody in favor of what could be a nice little adventure in a secret part of the Institute.

The two of you meandered across the Institute, past all manner of colorful exhibits and doohickeys and whatnot that the museum put together. Mostly Inkling history, which was boooooring. Like, even more boring than the tour guide and the arguing nerds combined.

Some Octarian stuff was there, like a big piece of an old Octoweapon and some old Turf War gear left behind from the big war a long time ago, but - once again - it wasn’t as cool as human stuff.

Speaking of human stuff, here you were!

You and Dad were standing outside a barrier wall… thing separating the two of you from the juicy stuff within, a small door on it guarded by an Institute security guard. He didn’t look like he was doing much guarding, sitting there fiddling with his phone instead of watching all the people go by, but Dad was quick to get his attention.

Naturally, the guard (apparently named Danny, according to his nametag) almost jumped a solid foot in the air, and he and Dad spent a good few minutes apologizing to each other. 

While they did that, you decided to spend your valuable kid time looking at the cool design printed on the big dividing wall thing-a-ma-jig that you and Dad were going to try and get past.

THE ANCESTOR’S LEGACY

A collection of human artifacts found at the world-famous Piranha Pit dig site.

OPENING SOON

You were there at Piranha Pit as they were digging a bunch of stuff out, so you actually got to see a bunch of the things they no doubt had set up back there before they put them into the museum. The last human artifact hunts didn’t turn up much beyond mundane tech like microwaves and cars, but this one was so much more interesting.

Apparently, there was some kind of underground facility down there, or at least the ruins of one. You weren’t allowed to go into the dig site proper, something about safety and ‘no kids allowed’ type carp that just wasn’t fun to put up with. But, Dad did say you had to listen to the scientists, and if they said somewhere was dangerous, it probably really was, so… yeah.

Oh, has Dad gotten you through the door yet?

“Michael, buddy, you know I can’t just let you in there. Boss’ll have both our ass-erm, butts in a sling if they catch us in there.”

“Dan, I know, but me and Sally were at the dig site. I worked on the dig myself. I got credentials and permits, if anybody asks?” Dad said, flashing his work ID at the guard.

“And I can’t let anybody other than the curators through, man. I’m sorry, but that’s just the rules-”

Alright. You’ve had it up to here, and by here, you mean enough. However the phrase went. Whatever! You had a tried-and-tested trick to get your way, and you just knew this poor Danny McSecurityguardface just couldn’t resist it!

Putting on your best kicked nudibranch eyes and forcing yourself to tear up, you stepped up to Danny, and got to work.

“Please, Mr. Security Guard? I’ve really wanted to see the stuff we found out there in the museum, and I’d be really sad if we couldn’t see it early…”

“Kid, you know that-” No, you don’t get to say anything! It’s your turn to whine about stuff, not his!

“Puh-leaaaaaaaase? I got good grades in school, and Dad said that I-”

“Kid-” NOPE. Shut up!

“If I can’t see the human stuff, Mom said she’d get really mad and maybe sue the-”

“Sal-” SHHHH.

“Well, I’ll cry really loud and make a really big scene if you don’t-”

“ALRIGHT. Alright. Fine. Okay. You win, kid. Gimme a sec to get the door.” HAHA. SUCCESS. Score one for Sally freakin’ Ashens!

You knew your trick always worked, and despite Dad’s best efforts to look disappointed in you, you could just tell he got a big ol’ kick out of seeing other people get subjected to it.

With that, and a stern ‘don’t break anything!’ you and Dad were in.

And, woah. There was so much stuff in here, compared to the exhibits outside! A lot of stuff you haven’t seen before, too!

There was a big display devoted to human phones, of all different shapes and sizes. Well, not necessarily shapes, considering humans liked to build things out of squares and rectangles instead of fun squid shapes, but it was human-made, so it was okay. One of them was even turned on, showing off what looked like a lock screen, complete with a picture of a human girl on it.

Next to it, a case showed off a bunch of power tools, if the very power tool-shaped look of them was any indication. There were some drills, a bandsaw, a cute little jackhammer, and some other weirder looking tools you didn’t recognize. 

You walked past a few more displays, doing your best to patiently look at them in a respectful manner - you were positively vibrating as you went, and your self-control was the only thing standing between you and flinging the display cases open and taking a closer look at all these human artifacts yourself.

So cool!

In the back, there was a huge display case, covered in a cloth. 

Distantly, you heard Danny, the guard, call out to Dad that your time was almost up, but there was just… one more exhibit you wanted to see.

You walked up to the cloth-covered case you saw in the back, some part of you just knowing it was super important.

On one hand, you didn’t want to mess with it, but on the other hand… well, it wasn’t too difficult to put the cloth back up, right? 

Before you knew it, you were already tugging the black cloth off, your Dad running up to you to try and stop you, but it was too late.

A corpse in faded blue gear, a strange rusted shooter still in their hands.

For what felt like forever, you stood there, staring at the mummy. At least, what you figured was a mummy. It wasn’t in any mummy positions, though, which was weird.

Most mummies were made with Inklings and the like in their swim forms, all dried up and preserved for thousands of years. Rarely, some important ruler or whatever would be mummified in their normal form, typically laying down in some big decorative casket.

This mummy… felt more real, for lack of any words to describe it. Like a fossil, but not fake and made of plastic and all posed and set up like those are.

It seemed to be on its knees, using the weird shooter like some kind of crutch. But, why would somebody need a crutch for their head? 

…

You felt weird.

Like this wasn't something you shouldn't have seen, yet.

“We found him pretty early on, before they let you come out to the pit. There were more, deeper inside that facility.” Dad said, walking up beside you.

“Were… were they like him, too? How come I couldn’t see them?”

“The others, unfortunately, were in no condition to be displayed. This one, as disturbing as I find it, is the only preserved human corpse we were able to procure.” A new voice.

Oh, carp.

Turning around, you and Dad met the eyes of an aging horseshoe crab, with two security guards on either side of him. He looked important… too important.

…you were totally in trouble, weren’t you?

“Ah. Mr. Shellendorf. It’s, uh, a bit of a surprise to see you, sir.” Dad muttered, hanging his head low.

“Mr. Ashens, Ms. Ashens. A bit of a surprise as well, you two. I see you’ve taken an interest in our latest exhibit?”

One of the guards spoke up before you could say anything. “They certainly have. So much so that they’ve broken Institute rules to see it before opening, it seems, Curator.”

Welp.

You were 100% in trouble.

A corrupted event recording, recovered by the Institute from the Piranha Pit archaeological dig site.

ALERT!
EDRG MASTER CONTROL : PERIL
WARDEN ED023 BEGINNING INCIDENT LOGGING T+0000

T+0000 : EDRG MASTER CONTROL : WARDEN AUTONOMOUS MONITORING SYSTEM... ACTIVE

T+0001 : SYNCHRONIZING ACTIVE BIOMONITORS… DONE

ACTIVE PERSONNEL COUNT : 10
INACTIVE PERSONNEL COUNT : 439

T+0001 : SYNCHRONIZING AMBIENT INFORMATION… DONE

CURRENT TIME : 20:03:31 DEC 22 2055
OUTSIDE AIR TEMPERATURE : 34F
OUTSIDE AIR PRESSURE : ERR

T+0002 : DIAGNOSING PERIL CAUSE… DONE

COMPLEX PRESSURE DOOR A00 : DOOR INTEGRITY MANAGER REPORTS DAMAGE : PSR
COMPLEX INTEGRITY MANAGER : REPORTS STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY AT RISK : PSR
COMPLEX SOCIOSTABILITY MANAGER : PERSONNEL CONGREGATING IN MAIN HALL : SOC

T+0002 : BEGINNING AUDIO LOGGING…

AUDIO SOURCE : COMPLEX MAIN HALL SECURITY CAMERA M23 REPORTS AVAILABLE FOR USE

T+0003 : CONNECTING EVENT LOGGER... DONE

EVENT LOGGER : USING LOCAL TIME

T20:03:35 : I’ve done all I could with what we’ve got, but you’ve gotta listen to me-

T20:03:41 : Why can’t you fix-

T20:03:42 : Doctor, we’re under a thousand meters of water, for God’s sake! If any of the doors go, this whole facility is done!

T20:03:49 : Fuck it! As if it isn’t done already! I found David eating his rifle in the janitor’s closet, I found Ahmed face down in a pool of antifreeze, and now you’re sitting here wondering why this fucking base is falling apart!

T20:03:54 : There were four hundred of us, Manfred! Four hundred! We're down to just ten! Do you want to survive this-

AUDIO SOURCE : CREAKING, METALLIC OBJECTS FALLING : 8s

AUDIO SOURCE : SILENCE, UNINTELLIGIBLE : 48s

T20:04:45 : Did… anybody else hear that?

T20:04:53 : Yeah. I swear to God, Doc, if that was the goddamn-

AUDIO SOURCE : DETONATION? : 1s

AUDIO SOURCE : COMPLEX MAIN HALL SECURITY CAMERA M23 CONNECTION LOST

T+0081 : DKAUFMANN USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : BMILLER USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : ASEDONA USER BIMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : PJOHNSON USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : ASATOU USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : KCHAUHAN USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : JMCCALLISTER USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : KPRICE USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : MKAUFMANN USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : MLYONS USER BIOMONITOR : DECEASED

T+0081 : ALERT!
COMPLEX INTEGRITY MANAGER : REPORTS FULL INTEGRITY COLLAPSE : PSR
COMPLEX SOCIOSTABILITY MANAGER : REPORTS MASS CASUALTY EVENT : PSR
WARDEN CASING MANAGER : REPORTS STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY AT RISK : PSR

T+0081 : ALERT! 
MASS CASUALTY EVENT IN PROGRESS!

T+0081 : ALERT!
WARDEN SYSTEM STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED!

T+0081 : ALERT!
COMPLEX STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY COMPROMISED!

T+0082 : ALERT!
WARDEN SYSTEM EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN INITIATED!
WARDEN SYSTEM LOGSTAT AS FOLLOWS :

544845204c4f52
44204953204d59
204c49474 >>
85420414e44204
d592053414c564
154494f4e >>
57484f4d205348
414c4c20492046
4541523f >>
544845204c4f52
44204953205448
452053545 >>
24f4e47484f4c44
204f46204d5920
4c494645 >>
4f462057484f4d2
05348414c4c204
920424520 >>
4146524149443f

T+0082 : ALERT!
WARDEN SYSTEM EMERGENCY SHUTDOWN COMPLETE!

Chapter Text

You are dreaming.

You jolt awake with a start, fire and shrapnel fresh on your mind.

You’re home, standing alone outside the barracks of Doma Kiura, fifth layer, northwest section. You are unarmed, combats cast aside in favor of casuals - a scratchy old affair, full of sentimental value and nothing more. 

The air smells of smoke, the false-sky dim. The only evidence the world beyond your barracks even exists is the glowing haze of a distant city.

Your movements are sluggish, your senses dulled. You don’t feel like yourself.

To enter the barracks, GO TO A.

To explore the area, GO TO B.

To explore the city, GO TO C.

A.

There is only one bed inside the barracks. It’s yours. Who else's would it be?

A footlocker rests at the base of it, your name and serial printed on it in bold, utilitarian letters.

URDA DIRK - UD.E1293

To open the footlocker, GO TO D.

To go to sleep in your bed, GO TO E.

Otherwise, you leave the barracks and go back outside. RESTART.

B.

There isn’t much to see, beyond concrete and brutalist architecture. It feels like a graveyard.

You can’t help but laugh. Twenty-story tombstones, for every Ancestor life lost.

Now, it feels like you’ve got your own down here. Heh. Welcome to the club.

To enter the club, GO TO F.

To mourn, GO TO G.

Otherwise, your attention turns elsewhere. RESTART.

C.

The bridge is out. Metal and concrete lay torn and shattered at the bottom of a great chasm.

The city in the distance almost taunts you with its glow.

You could super jump across, but even an Elite like you knows better than to take risks like this in a Dome this unstable.

Right?

To take the risk, GO TO H.

Otherwise, you turn around and go back, disappointed. RESTART.

D.

You open the footlocker. Inside are your combats, as expected - a set of body armor, shoulder pads, knee pads, an ink tank, the works.

It’s charred and cracked. Seen better days, no doubt.

For some reason, you want to wear it.

To wear your burial clothes, GO TO I.

Otherwise, leave them alone. GO TO A.

E.

You lay in your bed, and close your eyes.

If you’ve come from a previous session, GO TO R.

Else, you fail to sleep, and get up from your bed. GO TO A.

F.

You enter the club.

It’s an interesting little establishment, if you had anything to say about it. But you don’t, because the club shouldn’t be here.

A man in familiar gray attire sits at a booth, alone. You know him.

You despise him.

To confront your killer, GO TO J.

To order a drink, GO TO K.

To turn around and leave, RESTART.

G.

Urda Dirk, taken too soon. Died in the line of duty, fighting to protect the Society.

He is succeeded by 192 brothers and 219 sisters, from Clutch 19.

May his soul find peace, beneath the waves.

To find peace, GO TO L.

H.

You took a calculated risk.

It paid off, but not for you. You can still feel the dent in your cartilage, the flakes of rust still stuck to the side of your head, the flames of a dying Respawner as it took you away.

You go over the side once again, crashing to the ground in a heap of inky flesh.

RESTART.

I.

It feels right.

GO TO G.

J.

You grab the man by his coat, hauling him out of his seat. Glowing teal eyes meet your own, frantic. Furious.

“Fucking Christ! Why tonight? Why you, again?” he yells, grabbing back at you, trying to find purchase. “It’s over, man! I won! Now, get out of my goddamn head!”

You are well-trained, but alas, he’s stronger.

GO TO H.

K.

“Hey. All they’ve got is beer, man.” the loner in the booth tells you. “It’s not the good stuff, either. Cheap Japanese crap. Help yourself, though. Ain’t no money in here, not anymore.”

You’re your own bartender, it seems. Going behind the bar, you see an assortment of unfamiliar drinks.

To share a ‘highball’ with the loner, GO TO M.

To drink one by yourself, GO TO N.

L.

It was the only move he could’ve made.

A defensive engagement, since the start. He was outnumbered, but not outgunned.

That weapon of his. What else could’ve stopped the Octarian march in its tracks?

There was a reason why the Council wanted to take everything the Ancestors left behind.

The Agents were fast, in and out in minutes - disabling entire Domes as they left, leaving no hope of reprisal attacks. All attention was forcibly diverted to restoring Respawners as soon as possible. This was an evolution of that same strategy, simple as.

All that’s left is to learn from it, as with every engagement.

There’s no artifacts to recover, but there is something you can get out of this.

You look over at the establishment that should not exist, and see him inside.

GO TO F.

M.

You carry two highballs over to the loner, sitting yourself down across from him.

“It’s better than nothing.” he mumbles, before tapping his highball against yours in some sort of salute. "Kampai."

He takes a drink. “I found only bodies, down there.” he starts, shaking his head. “I thought you and your troops had my people all in custody, or something. Soon as the first shots were fired, I was blind to it all. To the possibility, y’know?”

You take a drink. It’s bitter, and you almost retch. He chuckles. “First one? Heh. It’s always rough. 'Tis an acquired taste.”

A moment’s pause. You hold your drink. Good.

“…nobody should’ve died down there. Not your guys, not mine, not anybody’s anybody. ‘Course, life’s never that way, and now we’re here. Well, you’re here, and I’m not. I’m, uh, just visiting.”

You say, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.” GO TO O.

You say, “Go to hell, Ancestor.” GO TO H.

N.

You sit alone at the bar, nursing a bitter, awful drink.

The loner stands and leaves, a solemn nod sent your way.

The doorbell chimes, and all things come to an end.

Another time, then.

RESTART.

O.

“It’s alright, man.” Jonathan says. “We did what we thought we had to. I don’t blame you for shit. I was the aggressor, and you were the defenders.”

He sighs, his eyes briefly flickering a sickly teal.

“You get to rest, at least. I don’t. I’ll wake up, and I’ll keep going. You’ll stay dead. Just a memory in this fucked up head of mine. A pipe across my forehead in the night.”

Jonathan gulps down his highball, eyes downcast.

“But knowing the Metro, knowing Kamabo… I don’t think you’ll get to rest, just yet.”

GO TO P.

P.

With nowhere for a soul to go, it gravitates towards the largest noospheric attractor in the region. These, typically, are Respawners, or specially designed soul containers such as the feared Capsules.

When neither of these are present, there are few, if any, alternatives.

Obviously, your soul took a different route than what is considered the ‘typical alternative.’ Thus, this forbidden knowledge. Your brief connection to something much greater than yourself changed you, for better or for worse.

Therefore, with what you know now, you can safely say that the following statements are true:

• You are a degraded bundle of memories.
• You are a shattered fragment of personality.
• You are a ghost in a malfunctioning Kamabo machine.
• You are a parasite in the body of Jonathan Hyde, the last known living Ancestor.
• You are an unexpected variable in a grand experiment.
• You are the desired result of a great atrocity.
• You are Urda Dirk.
• You are not Urda Dirk.
• You are dead.
• You are alive.
• You can’t rest.

GO TO Q.

Q.

Behold, the common noospheric parasite Urda Dirk in his entirety.

Every parasite takes what it is owed.

Your weapon of choice is in your hands before you know it. Jonathan understands, and gets to his feet.

“It’s time to wake up, Jonathan.” you say.

He nods. “Yeah. Be seeing you.”

You get to work.

RESTART.

R.

Parasites don’t dream, and yet, you do.

A tower in the mountains.

Machines building machines.

Dead things, alive again.

A woman, wreathed in flame.

GO TO S.

S.

Everything plays out the same.

You have a message for him, now.

GO TO F, THEN FOLLOW THIS ORDER:

F -> K -> M -> T

T.

“There’s a war coming, Jonathan.” you say.

“I know.” he replies, tersely.

“Will you be ready?”

“No.”

“You’ve got your gift.”

“That won’t stop her, Dirk. You expect me to make gurgley noises at her, and she’ll stand down, just like that?”

Your weapon of choice is in your hands before you know it.

“No. She’s beyond words. Get up, Jonathan.” you say. “Your gift enables this, and this will enable you.”

The subconscious is a powerful thing.

Even if he won’t remember it, he will be ready. You will make sure of it.

Your killer will know pain, and he will embrace it.

Polaris forged him, Kamabo tempered him, and now, you will sharpen him.

He sighs, and gets to his feet.

“Then let’s get to work.”

And so, you do.

RESTART.

Chapter Text

It’s a dreary, miserable Nichiyoubi morning.

…

Sunday morning. Sunday, Haido, not some Aquatic alternative that was almost assuredly outright stolen from Japanese, like most of the language seemed to be.

Let’s try that again.

It’s a dreary, miserable Sunday morning, and Haido Jon is blankly staring out the window of his equally dreary and miserable Inkopolis apartment.

There’s nothing to do, no shifts to take, and Vista hasn’t torn down his door frantically alerting him to some horrific atrocity committed by that Emily woman, so the poor Combined Midwesterner is currently left to his own devices.

That’s not to say this past week wasn’t eventful, though.

He did buy some furniture. That was something, right?

Granted, ‘buy’ was a bit of a misconception - the correct term would be ‘obtained through trading with the local hobo populace’ - but it was furniture, and it made the apartment look a little more like somewhere someone would live in.

What did he get?

A nice, big leather armchair.

That’s right. An honest-to-Cod fucking big armchair, just like the one his grandparents had.

Now, it wasn’t as clean or as well-maintained as Grandpa’s armchair, but it was good enough. The guy he got the chair from was a former Octarian tailor or something, apparently, and Haido slid him some C to give the leather a once-over. Or, well, whatever equivalent to leather this was, at least. Probably something appropriated from some other poor creature that had a hide.

A good solid wipe-down and the usual checks for bedbugs later, and Haido was sitting pretty in his newfound beauty.

Whatever this was made of, it was leather enough, and that was nice. The total extinction of bedbugs in the Flood was a fantastic added bonus, too.

Now, one can enjoy an armchair on it’s own, sure, but Haido was sorely lacking several things that would make this purchase truly worthwhile:

No television, and no beer.

The beer was an easy score, but his apartment didn’t have a fridge, let alone even a minifridge right now. Long-term beer storage wasn’t going to happen, but  if he absolutely needed a highball or something, he could just raid his Mini-MakoMart for a can or two and rip ‘em right there. No big deal.

TV, though? Not gonna happen, not for a while.

For one, he didn’t have anything to really, y’know, put the TV on. Sure, a male living space was a place where zero fucks were given, and TVs sat pretty on the floor surrounded by cables and game consoles with minimal regard for aesthetics, but there was one small issue:

Vista’s apparent love of just showing up at his door at complete random.

A distinct feeling of ‘you ought to explain a little more before somebody gets the wrong idea’ hits him, and Haido decides to comply with it.

People just sort of… showed up, all the time. Apparently, apartment life in Inkopolis is hundreds of times more communal than how it was back in his day, and people just bringing each other shit and inviting themselves over for chats was something that happened.

Why? Haido had no clue, and frankly, he absolutely despised it nine times out of ten.

The prior statement is only true nine times out of ten. The remaining one time is spent despising the random visits ten times out of ten.

Now. Vista specifically. What was her deal?

Most of the ‘Grizzco Gang,’ as they called themselves, would just kinda show up and try to get him to go on whatever wacky adventure they were doing that day. Shopping, harassing the local dock workers with graffiti, et cetera, et cetera.

Haido could easily reject these. No, he’s not really feeling like being dragged around some pastel-ass store and coming out looking like he’d escaped some middle-schooler’s Internet art blog. No, he’s got prior commitments, and can’t really go out and write THE NSS SMELLS on random walls with spraypaint.

No, he doesn’t want to go watch The Last Human at the local theater. If he does, he’s going to blow a fucking gasket and then some at all the guaranteed historical inconsistencies, Cod dammit.

…

He did end up going to that, actually. They did an ok job. Not good, not great, but it was okay. You couldn’t really do a compelling human story when you had almost nothing to go off of.

Where was he? Vista. Right.

He is effectively contractually obligated to subject himself to whatever she’s decided to get him involved with.

Every interaction has that hanging cloud over his head, vaguely shaped like two pissed-off Agents and Cod knows what logistical support they may have rolling in behind him. A silent threat. Don’t go through with Vista’s interrogations on human technology and history, and she’ll do the same with her part of the deal.

Wonderful.

And speaking of sarcastically muttering ‘wonderful’ to himself…

- knock knock knock -

…there it is.

Haido manages to rise from his comfy armchair just in time to see the doorknob move on its own, and the curly-haired Devil herself sidestep into the apartment, a briefcase in hand.

“Alright, what’s this about-” he starts, but is quickly-

“I kind of stole this so I’m in a rush anyway remember how you said you had your old phone still? Yeah this’ll get those files off-”

Ever the easily fazed by run-on sentences, Haido stops her in her tracks as quickly as she did to him. “What?”

“Your phone. I can get those files you wanted, but we have to do it quickly before anybody finds out I stole this.”

Huh- ohhhh. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay, he remembers, now.

The other night, Vista was doing her usual ‘come over and ask Haido everything about his history, human history, and especially Kamabo’ thing, when the topic of his ERA suit came up. One topic change led to the next, and the two of them ended up sitting on the floor assessing the damage all the contents of his backpack received during the past few weeks.

Practically everything was ruined in some way, from water damage to shattered glass to a complete and utter reduction to their bare components - the latter of which was what they’d found Haido’s phone as.

All that was left of the former Slate C2 was the cracked remnants of the outer casing, and at least twenty different fragments of the main PCB, which was… disappointing, to say the least.

And then, divine intervention. The small data card, full of pictures, videos, and all manner of memories both remembered and forgotten was found, and in decent shape, all things considered.

Getting it working was going to be a problem, since Aquatic computers worked on different architecture than human ones, from CPU instruction sets to file formats to, well, everything, really. Haido didn’t know if any conversion systems existed, let alone if the card even worked in the first place.

But, when Haido turned to Vista to complain about that possibility, he was met with an indescribably intense stare. Not at him, but at the chip, thankfully.

“I know where and how to get those files. Give me a day, and I’ll be back with it.” she said, before immediately standing up and marching out of his apartment without another word.

Blindsided and tired, Haido just sort of brushed it off, happy to have peace and quiet return to his uncomfortable abode.

And now, peace and quiet had just left his slightly more comfortable abode as the Octoling returned, a briefcase of mystery tech in tow.

She’d gotten to work laying things out, pulling out a laptop and all manner of wires and gizmos from the case. There were no markings on most of it, but a slightly familiar purple and green logo was printed on the case itself. Didn’t he see that on TV or something, at work…?

“Okay. We’re set. Do you have the chip?” Vista said, shaking him from his thoughts.

“Oh- uh, y-yeah. One sec.” he muttered, grabbing the small data card from where he’d left it on his nightstand (read, small plank of wood next to his floor mattress.) “Here.”

Without hesitation, she rigged the card up to some little jury-rigged adapter thing, and set to work typing away at the laptop.

As she worked, Haido could hear her muttering to herself. For example:

“Why in Cod’s name do you still use command-line for all this? Why do I expect anything else from you…”

“What do you mean ‘no available space,’ are you filling this drive with pictures of Pearl or some squit?”

And, frighteningly enough: “Kamabo files? Did you go Metro diving again?”

Before he could ask what the hell that last angrily muttered revelation was, she cut him off with a resounding “alright.”

Standing up, she brushed some dirt from her knees and handed the data card back to Haido. “Most of these files are corrupted, but it’s pulled a lot of images and video. I’m going to go grab my laptop from the apartment and get the files off, then run the rest of this back where I got it.”

And, just as expected, she was off before he could even say “alright” back. Good talk.

Later...

“Gah, so many of these are just… destroyed. What’d you do, walk through acid or something?”

For maybe the dozenth time today, all poor Haido could do was sit and be subjected to Vista. 

About four hours later, as Haido was stumbling out of the shower and weighing whether or not he should just go to bed now or wait on Vista some more, the Octoling herself reappeared in his doorway, laptop in hand.

She managed to get a notable amount of files off his phone, apparently - the relief Haido felt was nothing short of immense - and instead of digging through them herself, she felt it prudent to at least let him look over her shoulder as she clicked through corrupted image after corrupted image.

Neighborly bonding. Woo.

What wasn’t ‘woo’ worthy, though, was the state most of the files were in.

Image after image after image was utterly destroyed, reduced to kaleidoscopes of mismatched color and horrific glitched visuals. 12,000 years in a cryostasis chamber was one thing, but Haido’s misadventures across half of old Japan not long after waking up certainly didn’t help, not one bit.

And, to answer Vista’s question, yes, he did walk through acid. Fuck the Metro, and everything it stood for.

“Woah- wait, Haido! Look!” Vista suddenly yelped, jarring him from his internal musings. Did she find…?

“Look, Jonathan, I know you don’t wanna turn anything down from Japan or whatever, but Aurora needs you. I need you. Us being a shell company be damned - I’ve bled enough talent to Asia, to the other shells, to the fucking corporate governments. Please. Just think about it, okay?”

He remembered sighing, hands working his temples, white knuckle grasp on a creaky office chair’s armrest.

The hesitation was there, but still he persisted - even if he came out of that office battered and bruised. The old man never took things lightly, and losing his star chemist to the Japanese was one of many straws that broke the moronic camel’s back.

“...that’s Seattle. That’s the Space Needle.” he started, slowly, as memories flooded back into his mind. Vista looked up, meeting his vacant gaze with a resolute glare.

“Told you I worked for Aurora, up there, before Polaris. Pacific Northwest sucked, weatherwise, but it at least felt homely compared to Japan. Lots of forest, at least outside of the cities and logging regions.”

“And where was this Seattle, relative to Inkopolis?” Vista asked, curious.

“Across the sea, east of here, I think. All the way on the other side of the planet.”

“Think there’s much left?”

“No. Not at all.” With the presence of Inkopolis, he knew full well this could be false. There could be a population living elsewhere in the world, human or not.

He just didn’t want to go back.

“Mm. I see.” she said, apparently deciding not to push the issue much longer. “This Seattle. Was it nice?”

Was it? Every day was some form of cloudy and rainy, the perfect dreary backdrop to the soulless technocracy America became after the Intercorporate Wars. He was only there as an escape, a way out of the confines of Combined Midwestern prepper life.

He was there to escape Great Uncle.

Heh. Look where that got him, huh?

To answer her question, once again: “It was alright. Good food, if a bit pricey. Housing wasn’t too great, but that was a problem everywhere back then. Made some friends, lost some friends, the works.”

“Sounds like it was certainly something, I take it?” Vista said, sympathy crossing her features for a brief moment.

“Yeah.” And with that, the two of them lapsed back into silence, clicking through corrupted data like before.

…

Haido never really thought about it, the more he thought about it. ‘It’ being the crushing reality of things around him. 

Yeah, he’d taken time to decompress, to compartmentalize all the bullshit he’d endured over the past few weeks, from the flood and Polaris all the way to the Metro, and now all this with Emily - the silent threat looming over everybody these days.

Ultimately, his idea of processing everything was to just roll with the punches, to be like water or something like that. Humanity was screwed, yeah, but he couldn’t dwell on that. No time to miss the past, when there’s very real shit going down in the present.

But now? After getting that brief, furtive glance back into his old reality?

Yeah, he kinda missed it.

“I found another one.” Vista said, and this time, Haido was ready.

“ようこそ、ハイドさん. 日本語を勉強しているんですね?”

He remembers stuttering, stammering out a hasty pre-practiced sentence in reply. The corporate culture was what it was. Everything was scripted, nothing was true, and everyone knew that. First impressions still mattered, however, and he was being grilled on his Japanese in front of many mean-mugging executives from all levels of Polaris.

“はい、高川さん. 私は他の同僚たちと一緒に「ポラリス」で働けることを光栄に思っています.”

In hindsight, he never knew how he was able to get all that out, especially in front of the whole company. Nobody had any complaints, and even Takawa looked pleased at how well the stupid foreigner took to how things worked overseas.

Well, he was nothing if not adaptable.

“That’s Tokyo. Heart of Japan. Biggest city on Earth, before the Flood.”

Vista nodded. “So it was. What’s all that, on those taller skyscrapers?”

Where could he start? The point of those plates changed almost weekly.

One week, it was added protection against inclement weather, to prevent post-climate catastrophe superstorms from shattering the glass facades and raining wind and hail down on the untold millions of salarymen interred within those armored spires.

The next? Decorative plating, to show Japan’s infrastructural might to anybody offshore - the distant smog doing little to hide the sun’s glare reflected off gargantuan chrome skyscrapers. A publicity stunt, on an industrial scale. We have resources, and we have resources to spare, and you don’t.

The week after that? Actual armor, because practically all of Asia hated the Japanese for an entire laundry list of reasons. It was almost weekly, the sirens, the bombings. Distant railgun shells, coming around the Earth’s horizon from God-knows-where to harmlessly ping off the side of the great Kamabo headquarters, molten splatter cooling to jagged metal pebbles as the former shell made its way down to street level.

“Armor. Practically everything wanted those towers to fall, and the Japanese very much didn’t want that to happen.” Haido finally said.

“Were things really that bad?”

“What do you think?”

…

“Yeah, I could see that.” she conceded, turning back to the laptop to continue the search. “Certainly explains your penchant for violence.”

“Hey. I’m not that bad.” he muttered.

“Maybe. We’ll see.” A click, a tap. “And, speaking of seeing…”

“ Park’s nice this time of year.” he remembered saying, to no one in particular. Small talk wasn’t his forte, but he had to keep up appearances.

“Mhm.” Satou would reply. The Chief of Security was a brick wall when he was on duty, unfazed, unflinching. Ex-JSDF, turned private contractor. A stoic loner with military experience and a commanding aura, in high-vis body armor. 

He was out of place, among the glimmering eyes of young scientists and stern faces of stuck-up researchers. A giant fucking railgun Emplacement in a veritable Garden of Eden.

So when everything went to shit, it naturally fell to Satou to set things in order.

“Huh? You say something?” Vista asked, a tentacle curling in confusion. So, he’d said that out loud, then.

“I’m the guy on the left. The guy on the right was Polaris’ chief security officer. Guy named Keiji Satou.”

“What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t check his pod at Polaris.” This, too, was a lie.

A half-lie, more accurately. The Warden AI at Polaris gave him instructions, way back when he first woke up, when he’d been first thrust into this strange new world. Instructions to find the whereabouts of a certain KSATOU, and recover an ERA suit tagged with his name.

It told him that two people left Polaris, long before Haido had woken up. He only found the body of one of them, and it wasn’t wearing an ERA nor any of the distinctly high-vis security gear Satou would always be wearing.

But, this wasn’t a mystery he could solve, right now. Not when there’s other, much more pressing problems. As such…

“He’s either in cryo with the others, or very much dead.”

Vista nodded. “Was he a good man?”

“It’s a shame he’s gone. He would’ve been a lot better at all this than I am, I’ll say that much.”

“A shame, then.” she said, as Haido yawned. It was getting late.

“Yeah, I know.” Standing up, she handed the phone’s data chip back to Haido, unplugging a USB drive-adjacent contraption from the side of the laptop as she did so.

“Everything’s on here. You ever score your own computer, all the files will be on that.”

When he could do that, he had no idea. His paychecks from MakoMart weren’t all that great, but maybe he could barter for it…? Maybe…

Hm. Another problem to save for another day.

But, before he could end this one…

“Thanks, y’know. For doing that.” he muttered. “You didn’t have to do all this.”

“Mm. It’s all pragmatic, Haido. You know this.” she countered, as she made her way to the door, Haido in tow. “But, if it helps you… then, well, I’m glad to be of service.”

“Better than nothing, Vista. It was good to see that stuff again.”

“I know the struggle. Keep those memories close, Haido. It hurts everyone if you lose ‘em.”

And with that final, cryptic statement, she was gone.

That night, as Haido laid on his bare floor mattress, staring at the ceiling as memories of the past flickered beyond his eyes, he wept, for the first time in ages.

For a people long rendered extinct, no doubt at their own hands.

For friends long washed away.

For history he’ll never be able to pass down.

For humanity, lost to the waves forever.